Microsoft has published some incredible research in collaboration with a university in Beijing, China.

The interesting bit is that they were looking at other types of correlations than the ones that the other players look at to map 'relevance'.

Another interesting bit is that Microsoft is one of the first large US corporations to incoporate fuzzy systems into their products, and that China has the world's largest number of fuzzy scientists.

Google's technology is based on a probabilistic model which is a subset of fuzzy logic, as determined by 'probability & the hypercube' by a professor named Bart Kosko.

In my mind, better math = better engineering. If I were Google, I would seriously rethink my bias against non traditional systems & fuzzy logic, and toss the binary thinking that may constrain their ability to return optimal web results.

Try reading through a bit of MS history / engineering / and their papers out of the Beijing University I mentioned (might have posted a link here, not sure).

Google in their research, continually reference probability, as the solution to deal with ambiguous or incomplete data. They have an incredible search engine, but at Stanford, even the current research on 'bettering PageRank' involves using a different approach.

I love their engine, however, when you read through their old papers, it's pretty clear what math school of thought they were following.

The stuff that MS has been doing for years, is only possible with fuzzy systems...applied to the web, and you get math in 3d instead of 2d.

I have seen a number of your posts around, and I respect your opinion- But I have to question your last post.

Yes, they have the rights to a lot of photos. Yes they make a lot of money. Yes MS has a ubiqitous presence in computing and finance. Yes they're a bunch of dorks when it comes to marketing. Yes, because of their size and the abundance of MS Hacking Tools they're the target of every angry overprivileged teenage hacker...

But is this really a reason to be resentful of MS if they want to get into the web search business? I say no. It's not logical.

Think about this: Visit the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation [gatesfoundation.org] web site and see how they've donated over SIX BILLION DOLLARS in 2003 to worthy causes like fighting aids in Africa, education, libraries, etc.

What has Apple done besides self serving donations of computer equipment to design schools in the 80's?

Has Google behaved as a responsible citizen of the world and given back even a fraction of a fraction of 1 percent to make life a better place for those less fortunate?

Perhaps this is a little off-topic but, with great respect for your opinion, so is your post. And that's the point of this post: It's important to keep to the topic.

I'm not discounting the value of healthy skepticism but your post goes beyong skepticism and, no disrespect to you intended, it delves into the realm of knee-jerk reactionism- which does nothing to further the discussion of a Microsoft Bot in the wild.

But I agree with you Mozart, they can take our bucks, but they can't take our freedom.

I applaud MS's foray into search because it has the potential to give Google some competition, and that can only be good for everyone because it will drive innovation.

Back to topic, they seem to have little adjustments to do about clustering. I have results from the sames domains repeated several times in first 3 SERP. Is it an clue they are mixing results from several sources?

The first net engines showed up in 94, and there are historical firsts in db/se programs long before that. And it has taken MS until 2003 to do something? The worlds largest software manufacture with 20k'ish programmers. hmmm speaks loudly of the ability of Windows to scale (lack thereof).